Casa Semear: Overview of 2012

Here´s a short video with some pictures of everything that happened at community center Casa Semear during 2012! 

We´re very grateful for everything God did in and through us at Casa Semear and in the hearts of the children, teenagers and families we were able to work with during this year!

All honour to Him!

The past months in pictures

A lot happened in the past three months, by God´s grace we´ve been able to experience many different things. So here are some pictures to update you all in a creative, visual way about our life and work here in São Paulo, Brazil.

June of 2012

SuperWoman program

In June, towards the end of the first semester of the SuperWoman program for teen girls in community center Casa Semear, we organized a special beauty day for the girls.

A long Saturday full of beauty workshops (hair, nails & make-up) and for each teen girl an individual photo shoot with the theme: Believe it, you are beautiful! 

Adoption

On the 12th of June we received a long-expected, super important phone call with some great news: we were approved as adoptive parents by the local authorities of São Paulo. 

This means that we´re on the waiting list for a baby now and that, one certain day, we´ll receive another phone call with the news that we´re going to be a mommy & daddy! Super exciting!

 

Also in June, community center Casa Semear received a big group of teenagers from a church in Texas, USA.

A 12 day long mission trip brought this group of excited young adults to us to help us finish some of the building work and paint the newly build staff house at Casa Semear. We and they, I believe, had a great time! 

Holidays in Holland

A bit later in June we, Caio and I, went on a short holiday trip to Holland and London. It was very good to spend time with our family and friends there and just be away for a bit, relax and regain our energies while enjoying Holland.  

We also went on a short city trip to London in honor of our fifth wedding anniversary which we celebrated last year (05/08/2011).

July of 2012 

Teen camp

In the beginning of July we flew back to São Paulo, well rested and with new strength. As soon as we got back here, we started the preparations for the yearly teen camp of community center Casa Semear which we always plan in July, during winter holidays.

We had some amazing days with a great group of kids during camp. We had lots of fun during the many sport activities and (night) games and a lot of time to really invest in our friendships and trust bonds with these kids. Together we studied and lived through Joseph´s life story and talked much about family relationships and forgiveness. It was a good, special time! 

Spare time...

At home, in our spare time, we´ve been busy improving our office space and creating a creative arts & crafts corner for me (Dot). As Caio is most of his time working at home now for the Christian publishing house, working on text revision, translation and investing in his theology studies, it was about time to improve his office space a little.

Caio´s been busy making a new office table, book shelves and a book case out of used pallets and wooden crates. Here´s the result!

I love to be creative in my spare time and so, when we were in Holland, I bought my very first sewing machine. After reorganizing the office, I now have my own arts & crafts corner where I can spend all my spare hours and relax.

 

August of 2012 

On the 5th of August we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary! Going through life together and building up a life together has been and will always be a great adventure we both greatly enjoy; we can clearly see God´s guidance, presence and blessing upon our lives and we´re just so thankful to Him for these past years and the future that lies ahead of us!

 

SuperWoman program

In August the SuperWoman program for teen girls started once again for the second semester of this year. I now work with a quite stabile group of around 20 girls between  11 and 15 years old. Every week there is another dynamic, creative and interesting meeting in which we talk about all kinds of interesting topics for teen girls and study the Bible together and seek God in prayer.

It is so encouraging to see how much these girls have grown in the past year; they are a close group with good friendships, trust bonds and openness among each other. In the past couple of weeks we´ve been talking about a woman´s body, sexuality and dating.  

We think it´s very important to talk about these topics with the girls and try to guide them and teach them Biblical principles. Especially when you realize that actually many girls who come from the lower social classes in Brazil get pregnant during their teen years…

September of 2012

Since the beginning of September we have two new family members: Jip & Janneke! Their names refer to a famous children´s book from Holland that is all about the adventures of two little friends named Jip & Janneke.


ABBA staff retreat

Also in September we participated in the yearly staff retreat of our missionary organization ABBA. The retreat consists in a long weekend away with the whole ABBA team (from various different ministries), it´s a time to rest, to seek God together, pray for each other, develop and strengthen friendships and just hang out and have fun. And this time it was even better because my sister, Joseline, and her Brazilian boy friend, Bruno, went along too!

The ABBA team is a great bunch of people, they´re like a second family to us, so we always enjoy it very much to be able to spend a few days with them.

We enjoyed all the free time, the fun during the many games, the camp fire on a lovely, warm evening and all the laughter and jokes involving the costume parties during dinner time...

We are very grateful to God for giving us such great colleagues, friends and brothers & sisters!

God bless you!

 

Caio & Dot

 

SuperWoman: a pyjamas-party & first fruits!

Looking back on the past year of course makes me look back too on the work we did at community center Casa Semear; and one of the first things that comes to mind is the SuperWoman program for teen girls. As many of you might know, in the beginning of 2011 I started a special, weekly program for teen girls; a dynamic, interactive program called SuperWoman, developed by Youth for Christ Holland, which includes all kinds of subjects relevant & interesting to teen girls. Among other things, we talked about family relationships, inner & outer beauty, feelings, talents, friendship, sexuality & boys, our life stories & our future. 

 

We started the year with 20 teens and finished it with 16; even though it wasn´t always a very stable group (sometimes girls would drop out and others would be added to the group), together we managed to create a positive and more importantly, a safe atmosphere. Slowly openness and trust developed, new friendships were created and old ones strengthened. We had great times together, a lot of fun, but also some serious moments and challenging talks. It was great to see how everybody was so excited about it; not just the girls, but I myself would wait anxiously for every next Tuesday! It is such a privilege to be able to invest in these girls´ lives & to share a little bit of my life and experience with them. I really enjoyed it! And I hope so did they…

 

In the last months of the year I specifically invested time in short Bible studies at the beginning of each SuperWoman program. The majority of the girls didn´t really know the gospel yet and only a few of them come from Christian backgrounds. We spent time talking about God as our Creator, our Savior, Father and Lord. We read the Bible together and studied God´s plan of salvation, while I (and the rest of the team) prayed constantly that God would reveal Himself to these girls… I did my very best to get through to them, but I knew very well that it´s God´s Spirit who changes hearts & lives… Oh how I longed to see these girls living their lives for God, how that would change their lives, enrich their lives! What joy and hope would they experience! True joy and true hope, so different from the joy and hope this world has to offer! I would imagine it… and many times I would pray for them with tears in my eyes… how I´ve come to love these girls!!

 

To finish the year together, I had planned a big pajamas-party at the end of November. For weeks I was busy with all the preparations and it turned out to be a huge party! We had so much fun together: only teen girls & the 3 ´aunties´ (Silvana, Dora and me)! We had a very full program: making a photo collage, eating pizza, lots of games, watching a movie, Christmas presents, a pyjamas fashion show, photo session, making Christmas cookies, a luxury breakfast & somewhere in between these things we had to try and get some sleep! ;0)

But the best moment came when Silvana during devotional time explained the gospel once again and 3 or 4 hands were raised with the same question: ´Auntie, I want to know how we can do this: accept Jesus… Because I really need Him in my life!´ Wow! That night 6 girls accepted Jesus into their hearts and lives! We spend time talking to them, praying together & crying out of joy because of what God was doing in their lives! It certainly was the greatest moment of 2011 for me! God hears our prayers and He is able and is ready to transform the lives of these kids who so often are so broken & give them new hope! 

 

In the following weeks we talked a lot more and thought about how to continue this journey together... Some of the girls came with the idea to use 20 minutes of the program on Friday for prayer! Great! So now regularly we have ´time with God´ as they like to call it, where we share things about our lives and pray together. With time I hope that all these girls will feel safe enough to really pray out loud in the group (something that still is new and scary for them right now). Besides this, we´ve done our best to get them into contact with a Baptist church nearby the community center, hoping that they will feel at home and become a part of this local church so that they´ll receive food, friendship and guidance. Things they really need. 

 

 












So 2011 was a great year when it comes to my work with teen girls!
I´m so excited to see what 2012 will bring us...

Dot